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Upon receiving no reply, Mr. Farmer sent one of the top-men up to look at me. No sooner had he reached the topgallant rigging than he reported me dead. A cry of horror escaped from all on deck. The captain rushed up: he needed no report. He was frantic with grief: he wept like a child, and assisted with his own hands to lower me down; they were his arms that received, himself that bore me to his cabin. Like a wilful boy who had slain his pet lamb, or a passionate girl her dove, he mourned over me. It was a long time before my respiratory organs could be brought into play. My recovery was slow, and it was some time before I could arrange my ideas. A cot was slung for me in the cabin, and bewildered and exhausted I fell into a deep sleep.

I awoke a little after midnight perfectly composed, and suffering only from the wale that the cord had made across my chest. Before a table, and his countenance lighted by a single lantern, sate the captain. His features expressed a depth of grief and a remorse that were genuine. He sate motionless, with his eyes fixed upon my cot: my face he could not see, owing to the depth of the shadow in which I lay. I moved :-he advanced to my cot with the gentleness of a woman, and softly uttered,

"Edward, my dear boy, do you sleep?"

The tones of his voice fell soothingly upon my ear like the music of a mother's prayer.

"No, Captain Reud, but I am very thirsty."

In an instant he was at my side with some weak wine and water. I took it from the hand of him whom, but a few hours before, in my animosity I could have slain.

"Edward," said he, as he received back the tumbler, "Edward, are we friends?"

"Oh! Captain Reud, how could you treat a poor lad so, who respected, who loved you so much?”

"I was mad-do you forgive me, Edward?" and he took my not unwilling hand.

"To be sure, to be sure-but do me one little favour in return." "Any thing, any thing, Edward—I'll never masthead you again.” "Oh, I was not thinking of that: I ought not to have put you in a passion. Punish me-masthead me-do any thing, Captain Reud, but call me not bastard."

He made no reply: he pressed my hand fervently: he put it to his lips and kissed it- -on my soul he did-then after a pause, gently murmured "good night," and, as he passed into the after-cabin to his bed, I distinctly heard him exclaim, "God forgive me how I have wronged that boy!"

The next day we were better friends than ever, and for the three years that we remained together, not a reproachful word or an angry look ever passed between us.

I must be permitted to make three observations upon this, to me, memorable transaction. The first is, that at that time, I had not the power of retention of those natural feelings of anger which all should carry with them as a preservation against, or a punishment for, injury and insult. I know that most of my male and many of my female

readers will think my conduct throughout pusillanimous or abject. My mother's milk, as it were, still flowed in my veins, and with that no ill blood could amalgamate. All I can say is, that now, I am either so much better or so much worse,-that I should have adopted towards Captain Reud a much more decided course of proceedings.

My second remark is, that this captain had really a good heart, but was one of the most striking instances that I ever knew of the demoralizing effect of a misdirected education, and the danger of granting great powers to early years and great ignorance. With good innate feelings, no man ever possessed moral perceptions more clouded.

And lastly, that this statement is not to be construed into a libel on the naval service, or looked upon in the least as an exaggerated account. As to libel, the gentlemanly deportment, the parental care of their crews, and the strict justice of thousands of captains, cannot in the least be deteriorated by a single act of tyranny by a solitary member of their gallant body; and, as to exaggeration, let it be remembered that in the very same year, and on the very same station that my tricing up to the truck occurred, another post-captain tarred and feathered one of his young gentlemen, and kept him in that state, a plumed biped, for more than six weeks in his hen-coop. This last fact obtained much notoriety from the aggrieved party leaving the service and recovering heavy damages from his torturer in a court of civil law. My treatment never was known beyond our own frigate.

(To be continued.)

I'D BE A SPIRIT!

I'd be a spirit, happy and holy,

Wand'ring at will o'er the fields of the blest,
Never to visit this dark world of sorrow,

But when despatch'd on some kindly behest ;—
When at His bidding, the Spirit of spirits,

With soft wing descending to regions of night,
To whisper to some dying mortal the promise,
That turns his dark grave to a temple of light.

I'd be a spirit, happy and holy,

Bound to the bright and the blessed above,
Not by a chain that in time can be broken,

As the light links that bind us poor mortals to love;
But highest communion of thought and of feeling,
Ineffable love, that no self can control,

All centered in One, e'en the Sun of redemption,
That calls into blossom the spring of the soul.

I'd be a spirit, happy and holy,

Waking my lyre in those love-lighted skies,
Where sun, moon, and stars never shine, but the glory,
That streams from the Godhead is light to all eyes;
Or by waters of life, where the bright tree is growing
Of knowledge, not given to proud suns of dust,
Weave garlands to crown the blest beings that enter
Through "much tribulation," the rest of the just !
Nov. 1835.-VOL. XIV.—NO. LV.

X

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES CONNECTED WITH

LAYCOCK ABBEY.1

BY MRS. CRAWFORD.

A STORY was current at the abbey that the apparition of a nun, all in white, was seen in the old avenue upon moonlight nights; and many of the domestics declared that they had frequently seen her gliding about the long galleries. One night, when Mrs. Robinson, (our pastor's wife,) was sleeping at the abbey, (which she was in the habit of doing, when it was wet or stormy,) and just as the clock had chimed the ghost's hour of twelve, a strange mysterious noise sounded through the chamber. She sate up in bed; and putting back the curtains, saw by the light of the moon, shining dimly through the old casement, a little figure in white, couched on the hearth-stone of the antique fire-place. The story of the nun immediately occurred to her mind, and though she had always laughed at it, her fears now began to give the colouring of probability to the tale. After looking at the object of her alarm till it seemed magnified into twice its original size, at length, overcome by her terror, she awoke her husband. He also distinctly saw the apparition, and being just roused from a sound slumber, wondered greatly what it might mean. Determined at length to satisfy himself, he got up and advanced cautiously towards the fireplace, when, behold, a large white owl, making a dismal cry, flew up the capacious chimney, where it had built its nest. They both laughed heartily at the fright it had occasioned, nothing doubting but that the nun herself evanesced in a manner exactly similar, and that the whole of that wonderful story had originated in some such aerial visitant. This shows the necessity of investigating, at the time, the causes of those strange sounds and appearances which are so often heard and seen in old buildings, and so seldom reasonably accounted for. Had the worthy curate gone to sleep again without ascertaining who the midnight intruder was, the tale of the "White Nun" would have received a further authentication, and one of the best chambers in the abbey might have been appropriated solely to the spiders, as the only suitable companions for the unquiet spirit. Lady Shrewsbury (as I before observed) was not in the least addicted to those superstitions so commonly ascribed to Catholics, yet a lamentable event which took place at the abbey gave rise to an erroneous opinion, on my part, touching the state of mind in which she would meet death. Sir Walter Blount, who was with his lady visiting the countess, died suddenly one day from the bursting of a blood vessel, whilst kneeling at his prayers. Lady Shrewsbury sent off for me to come and stay the day with her, and evinced an uncommon degree of fear and dislike at being in the house with a corpse. I wondered much that, at her age and so pious, she could entertain such a dread of death, and thought how painful her own

1 1 Continued from vol. xii. p. 402.

would be; but the philosophy of a girl in her teens cannot amalgamate seeming contrarieties; and it was not till my respected friend died "as calmly as a saint," that I discovered my mistake, and that the human mind (which is a problem of contradictions, difficult of solution to all but the Eternal propounder of hearts) does often in its last mortal struggle, gain a triumphant victory over all those little weaknesses that have so long held it captive.

There is a pleasure, though a melancholy one, in looking back to by-gone days.

It pleases, and it saddens too,
Life's rosy morning to review;

Of childhood's friends, how very few
Remain of all that once we knew!

The wild flowers spring where many sleep,
And some have crossed the faithless deep,
And all have learned what 'tis to weep
O'er parted joys they could not keep.

Life is indeed a camera obscura, reflecting a thousand forms and retaining nothing. Bright shapes pass before us, one after another; but so evanescently do they pass, that we can hardly tell one from another by any distinctive feature. Like the miser's hoard, the treasures of memory are so multiplied, and so heterogeneously thrown together in the great storehouse of the mind, that it is difficult to separate what we want from what is not wanted; and, in this way, my reminiscences take a more desultory form than criticism perhaps might think it right to tolerate.

About the distance of a mile from the abbey stood "Old Lackham House," the family seat of the Montagus, with whom Lady Shrewsbury kept up a more friendly intercourse than with any in the neighbourhood. This ancient place was considered one of the lions of North Wiltshire, and from its great antiquity, and the number of curious relics it contained, was well worthy the attention of the antiquarian. Built in the days of unimproved architecture and insecure enjoyment of property, it presented an appearance of rude grandeur, rather than any beauty or regular proportion.

It stood completely embosomed in ancient woods, whose patriarchal trees looked almost coeval with the venerable pile they had for so many centuries sheltered from the wild storms of winter. The approach to Lackham was through a long avenue of aged oaks. At the back of the mansion, studded with cottages and crowned with woods, rose the beautiful hill of Bowden. To the left lay, in the blue distance, the far-famed Salisbury plain; while bounding the home view Laycock Abbey showed its white and time-honoured towers above the tree tops, and the village mill, with all its rural appendages, gave life and interest to the otherwise still solitude that reigned around. The classical Avon, dear to song, wound its silver waters through the ample domain, giving beauty and fertility to a spot where the poet might have conjured up the golden visions that give immortality to the dwellings of men.

The great hall at Lackham was an immense cathedral-looking apartment, lighted by high antique casements, inaccessible to the

The ban

reach of the tallest person, and hung round with armour. quetting-room, equally remarkable for its size, was newly-floored with the native oak of the estate in the reign of Henry the Eighth, in honour of that monarch's visit to Lackham, who was entertained there for several days, while paying his addresses to the Lady Jane Seymour. The chambers occupied by that Bluebeard of husbands and his attendants were not much in request with the young folk of modern times; and the old arched door, which conducted (as some rudelycarved letters upon it intimated) "to King Henry's apartments," was rarely unclosed after night-fall. In one of these chambers stood the antique carved bedstead on which the king reposed; the royal arms and those of the Lackham family were beautifully emblazoned on the dark polished oak at the head of the bed, and the curious key which gave entrance to this room was presented by George Montagu, Esq. to the British Museum. The late Colonel Montagu,* well known to the literary world for his works on ornithology, always slept in this apartment when at Lackham. The ghost stories I have heard about old Lackham House (which yielded not a tittle to Laycock Abbey in legendary lore) would do very well to tell over a Christmas fire, to ears as greedy as mine once were of the marvellous and the horrible; when (as I have heard my mother say) I always, as a prelude to the story about to be told me, put back my hair behind my ears for fear of losing one word.

There is still extant a very curious old print representing, in various compartments, the preparations for the king's visit to Lackham, with the rats and mice running away from the house-maids, who with mop and broom are making all things clean and trim for the royal guest. Subjoined to the print are some twenty or thirty stanzas, illustrative of the subject and also giving an elaborate, though certainly not poetical, description of the requisites for a wife. It is so many years since I read them, that my memory retains only three lines, in which one might suppose the author to be invoking the genius or guardian spirit of old bachelors.

"Make her a wise and a well-tempered she,

A little starch, yet moderately free,

One that wont pout and frown, but smile on me."

How I came to remember these lines I cannot tell: but having remembered them, they will furnish the antiquary with a sample of the poetry of a learned doctor of that period

Never perhaps was there shown, in any family, a stronger instance of the mutability of fortune, than in the Montagus of Lackham, from whom are descended the Dukes of Manchester and Earls of Sandwich. Time, that setter up and puller down of the pride of men, has brought about great and melancholy changes, since old Lackham House was levelled with the dust, to make way for the modern mansion that now occupies its place. The thoughtless extravagance of youth, and

Colonel Montagu succeeded his brother, James Montagu, Esq., who died unmarried, in the Lackham estates.

+ Dr. Baynard, whose ancestor built Baynard Castle, in London.
Old Lackham was nine hundred years old at the time of its razure.

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